[OPLINTECH] Moving to less-locked-down public computers with DeepFreeze

[JKENZIG]

Not sure why you want to totally reboot between patrons.  Cassie clears
out internet cache at logout.  You will have a lot of issues with cassie
scheduling if you reboot after each patron. 

We set up deepfreeze to go into maintenance mode overnight once per week
and set it to download and install updates and then refreeze the
workstation on a reboot prior to opening. 

 

We only reboot the systems if a patron starts having problems on them
and then Deepfreeze resets them to normal. 

 

Jim Kenzig
Network Manager
Cuyahoga County Public Library

Administrative Offices

2111 Snow Road / Parma, OH 44134-2728

p 216.749.9389 / f 216.749.9445

www.cuyahogalibrary.org

 

From: oplintech-bounces at oplin.org [mailto:oplintech-bounces at oplin.org]
On Behalf Of John Librarian
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 9:42 AM
To: oplintech at oplin.org; SYSLIB-L at listserv.buffalo.edu
Subject: [OPLINTECH] Moving to less-locked-down public computers with
DeepFreeze

 

Right now our public computers are locked down so that you can't install
anything, can't run anything that's not on our run-only list, etc.  This
of course is in order to keep each computer from getting messed up for
subsequent patrons, and to protect other machines on the network.  Of
course, there are times when the computers won't do something a patron
wants to do, like using a web site that requires its own special
software to be installed or running a program from a CD-ROM for school. 

So, we're going to try switching to a less-locked-down setup.  We're
going to use Deep Freeze to restore computers when they reboot, and
we're going to use CASSIE to reboot between patrons.  (Both of these
programs are new to us.)  I would appreciate any suggestions for further
measures to take to keep things secure and running nicely.  Our
environment: We have 34 public PC's which we're replacing with new ones
(with Windows XP); we have an Active-Directory-enabled Windows domain
with one DC, runningServer 2003. 

My ideas are to have one user account per computer (with permissions
only to that computer) as a local power user, to put these computers on
a separate subnet and if possible a VLAN, and to make sure our Windows
server is locked down as much as possible.  I could put them on a
separate segment of the firewall, but I understand that you can't manage
a Windows domain through a firewall (or any other kind of router) and it
seems like it would be useful to manage these computers on our existing
domain.  I don't yet know how we can keep users from turning off CASSIE
after they log in; I'm not sure if keeping them from running taskmgr.exe
will do it; if nothing else I suppose we can have a script run every
minute or 5 minutes, check for the CASSIE process, and reboot if it's
not running (I think I can make this invisible to the user using a VBS
instead of just a BAT file). 

Thanks for any help you can give me, even if it's just thoughts, or
reasons you think this is a bad idea.  If you reply privately I won't
forward your info to anyone - I know you might not want to talk publicly
about your security.

 johnqlibrarian at gmail.com <mailto:johnqlibrarian at gmail.com> 

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